Zorn, again

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In his first-quarter review, Dan Banks of SI.com heaps some praise where it rightfully belongs — at the left hand of rookie coach Jim Zorn.

After a woeful preseason and dreadful opener against the Giants, Zorn has the Redskins playing well in the toughest division in the league.

Here’s what Banks had to say:

From the day they were hired, they faced questions about their lack of NFL head coaching and coordinating credentials, but I’d say it was a pretty good first month of work for the league’s four rookie head coaches. Care to quibble?

– Washington’s Jim Zorn has his confident Redskins at 3-1, on a three-game winning streak, and coming off a head-turning 26-24 upset of the previously undefeated Cowboys in Texas Stadium, where no new Redskins coach had ever won before.

– Baltimore’s John Harbaugh and his scrappy Ravens are 2-1, and on Monday night in Pittsburgh came within a play or two of going to 3-0 within the AFC North despite starting a rookie quarterback in Joe Flacco.

– Atlanta’s Mike Smith has brought 2-2 respectability to his rebuilding Falcons, who are only a game behind NFC South co-leaders Carolina and Tampa Bay (3-1). Atlanta, too, is doing just fine with a rookie quarterback in Matt Ryan.

– And even Miami’s Tony Sparano made us sit up and take notice, with his 1-2 Dolphins pulling off the NFL’s upset of the year, that imaginative 38-13 Week 3 thrashing of New England in Foxboro — a loss that snapped the Patriots’ league-record 21-game regular-season win streak. Miami, in case you forgot, finished a cool 15 games behind New England last year.

All told, the Redskins, Ravens, Falcons and Dolphins combined to go 19-45 in 2007 (.297), but they’re already almost half way to matching that modest win total at 8-6 (.571) through just four weeks of 2008. It makes one wonder whether previous NFL head coaching and coordinating experience is much of a prerequisite at all.

But as turnarounds go, it’s hard to match the one the Redskins and Zorn have pulled off in Washington, because we’re not even talking about last year to this year. How about the strides the Redskins have made from the beginning of September until the end? Anybody who watched Washington’s Week 1 disaster against the Giants on that opening Thursday night at the Meadowlands wouldn’t recognize the team that fairly well dominated Dallas on Sunday.

I covered the Redskins’ 16-7 loss to New York, and it’s a sizable understatement to say Zorn and Washington quarterback Jason Campbell struggled that night. Neither one looked prepared for their roles, from Zorn’s dubious play-calling and late-game clock management to Campbell’s shaky, out-of-sync performance in the West Coast offense that Zorn brought with him from Seattle.

It only reinforced the notion that Zorn, the Redskins offensive coordinator-turned-head-coaching hire, was possibly in over his head, and that Campbell wasn’t going to be making an easy transition to a style of offense that features quick, tempo passing and rapid decision-making skills. But what a job Zorn and Campbell have done dispelling those two perceptions in the ensuing three weeks.

“I’m really happy for him because I know there were a lot of questions by a lot of people who didn’t know him, didn’t know his history, and didn’t know how prepared he was for this assignment,” said Redskins first-year offensive coordinator Sherman Smith, Zorn’s longtime friend and former Seattle Seahawks teammate from 1976 to ’82. “It’s nice to see some of the doubters become believers, but that’s what winning does.”

Campbell’s transformation from the indecisive, out-of-rhythm passer who faced the Giants to the crisp, in-control quarterback who carved up the Cowboys is nothing short of remarkable. The statistics that jumped out at me from Sunday’s game at Dallas was Washington having more than 38 minutes of possession time and rolling up 381 yards of offense. Campbell clearly understands what this offense requires of him now, and through four games he has yet to throw an interception or lose a fumble. He has seven touchdown passes, a 102.2 passer rating and is completing 65.3 percent of his throws.

“Right now, the light’s on,” Smith said of Campbell’s emerging game. “What he’s doing is playing with more confidence. After the Saints game (a 29-24 Week 2 win), you could tell the guys were starting to believe. It was just a matter of time. All we had to do was get that first one. I told our guys, ‘When the damn breaks, it’s going to be real good.’ We went from hoping to do it, to expecting we do it. That’s where we’re at right now, with 12 games to go.”

The Redskins this week face another stiff test at Philadelphia (2-2). At that point they will have played all three of their NFC East rivals on the road in the season’s opening five weeks. Let Washington pull another upset and improve to 4-1, and Zorn’s team will be a force to be reckoned with in the NFC, especially with the schedule turning softer in the following three weeks (St. Louis, Cleveland, at Detroit).

As for the debate over Zorn’s credentials? Nobody’s much worried about them now. A month into their new high-profile jobs, he and the rest of the NFL’s rookie head coaches are proving themselves ready to win.